This site reprints the 1853 book, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896).
Before the 1861-1865 War, a number of Christian abolitionists (Rev.
Cheever,
Fee,
Weld,
Rankin,
Foster,
Goodell,
Pillsbury,
etc.) opposed slavery. Nowadays, their Bible-based reasons for doing so are generally unknown.This series of websites educates by making the text of some of those writings accessible.
Whether or not you agree with their position, it is at least a good idea to know what their views were! and not be relying on merely what century-later revisionists claim those views were.
“It is not enough to know the past. It is necessary to understand it.”—Paul Claudel (1868-1955).
For more, see www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/key/keyII14t.html.

The Key to Uncle Tom's CabinPresenting The Original Facts
And Documents Upon
Which The Story Is Founded,
Together With Corroborative Statements
Verifying The Truth Of The Work,
byHarriet Beecher Stowe(Boston: John P. Jewett & Co,
Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington,
and
London: Low and Co, 1853)

This site presents a book by one of the activists, Harriet Beecher Stowe, from the period before the War (1861-1865).
Mrs. Stowe had seen slaves' desperate efforts to escape the savagery of American slavery. She wrote in short story form, a number of narratives, to describe some of those abuses.
Her 44 separate writings, short stories, were published on different occasions, each one time only, in a newspaper, over 44 different issues, as per the publishing style of that era.
But public demand for reprints, led to them being later consolidated, collected together from being 44 separate out-of-print newspaper columns, into one more-convenient and accessible volume, collectively gathered under one title, as Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Some Southerners accused her of misrepresenting slavery, exaggerating its savagery. She responded to critiocisms of Uncle Tom's Cabin by putting together the documentation, the documentation that composes this scholarly researched treatise on the subject, being reprinted here.
She cites the accusations, then gives her responses, chapter by chapter.
(Currently only the
Preface,
Part II's Chap. 12 (Roman law) and
14 (Hebrew law), and
Part IV's Chapters 5 - 6 (New Testament teaching)
and Appendix (1840 Census data), are available in full here.)
Note her citing official Southern court precedents on slaver crimes including torture-murders, some still available at law libraries, e.g., the Mann case, the Souther case, the Castleman case, etc.
The book is available with two different page numbering systems, one 259 page version with double-columns and one 508-page version with single columns. The site is in process of providing both sets of numbering, for your use, depending on which version you have.

VI. — UNCLE TOM: Similar case. — Old Virginia family servant. — Bishop Meade's remarks. —Judge Upshur's servant. —Instance in Brunswick, Me. — History of Josiah Henson. — Uncle Tom's vision. — Similar facts. — Story of a Boston lady. — Instance of the Southern lady on a plantation. — Story of an African woman. —Account of old Jacob.

IX. — ST. CLARE: Alfred and Augustine St. Clare representatives of two classes of men. —Letter of Patrick Henry. — Southern men reproving Northern men.—Mr. Mitchell, of Tennessee. —John Randolph of Roanoke, — Instance of a sceptic made by the Biblical defence of slavery.—Baltimore Sun on Biblical defence of slavery.—Specimen of pro-slavery preaching.

XI. — SELECT INCIDENTS OF LAWFUL TRADE. Separation of an aged mother from her son authenticated. — Selling of the woman to the trader authenticated. — Parting the infant from the mother verified. — Suicide of slaves from grief authenticated.—Parting of "John aged 30" from his wife authenticated. — Case of old Prue in New Orleans authenticated.—Story of the mulatto woman authenticated.

I. — INTRODUCTION: Accusations of the New York Courier and Enquirer — Extract from a letter from a gentleman in Richmond, Va., containing various criticisms on slave-law. — Writer's examination and general conclusions.

II. — WHAT IS SLAVERY? Definitions from civil code of Louisiana. — From laws of South Carolina.—Decision of Judge Ruffin. —Involve absolute despotism. —Do not admit of humane decisions. —Designed only for the security of the mailer, with no regard for the welfare of the slave. —Judge Ruffin. —No redress for personal injury that does not produce loss of service. — Case of Cornfute v. Dale. — Decision with regard to patrols.—Decisions of North and South Carolina with respect to the assault and battery of slaves. — Decision in Louisiana, by which, if a person injures a slave, he may, by paying a certain price, become his owner.—Decision in Louisiana, Berard v. Berard, establishing the principle that by no mode of suit, direct or indirect, can a slave obtain redress for ill-treatment. — Case of Jennings v. Fundeburg. — Action for killing negroes. — Also Richardson v. Dukes for the same. — Recognition of the fact that many persons, by withholding from slaves proper food and raiment, cause them to commit crimes for which they are executed. — Is the negro a person in any sense? — Judge Clark's argument to prove that he is a human being. —Decision that a woman may be given to one person, and her unborn children to another. — Disproportioned punishment of the slave compared with the master. — Case of State v. Mann, showing that the owner or hirer of a slave cannot be punished for inflicting cruel, unwarrantable and disproportioned punishments. — Judge Ruffin's speech.

VI. — THE EDMONDSON FAMILY: Old Milly and her household. — Liberty and equality. — The schooner Pearl. — An American slave-ship.—Capture of fugitives. —Indignation. — Captives Imprisoned. —Voyage to New Orleans and return. — Affecting incidents. — Final redemption.

I. — INFLUENCE OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH ON SLAVERY: Power of the clergy. — The church, what? — Influence.—Points Self-evident.—Course of ecclesiastical bodies.—Sanction of American slavery, as it is, by Southern bodies. — Summary of results.

II. — AMERICAN CHURCH AND SLAVERY: Trials for heresy. — Course as to slavery heresies. — Course of the Methodist Church.— Course of the Presbyterian Church, before the division.—Course of the Old School body. — Course of the New School body. — Results. — Congregationalists. — Albany convention. —Home Missionary Society. —The protesting power.—Practical workings of the general system.—Pleas for inaction.— Appeal to the church.

IX. — IS THE SYSTEM OF RELIGION WHICH IS TAUGHT THE SLAVE THE GOSPEL? Points to be conceded.—What is taught?—Principles and discussion.—Necessary results of the system. — Specimens of teaching and criticisms.

X. — WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Work of the church in America.—Feelings of Christians in all other countries. — Eradication of caste, and repeal of sinful laws against free colored people.—Various duties and measures as to slavery. — Closing appeal.

THE work which the writer here presents to the public is one which has been written with no pleasure, and with much pain.

In fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No auch resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of this work is one on which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. There is no bright aide to slavery, as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses, would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to bo found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is evil, and only evil, and that continually.

In preparing this work, it has grown much beyond the author's original design. It has so far overrun its limits that she has been obliged to omit one whole department;—that of the characteristics and developments of the colored race in various countries and circumstances. This is more properly the subject for a volume ; and she hopes that such an one will soon be prepared by a friend to whom she has transferred her materials.

The author desires to express her thanks particularly to those legal gentlemen who have given her their assistance and support in the legal part of the discussion. She also desires to thank those, at the North and at the South, who have kindly furnished materials for her use. Many more have been supplied than could possibly be used. The book is actually selected out of a mountain of materials.

The great object of the author in writing has been to bring this subject of slavery, as a moral and religious question, before the minds of all those who

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profess to be followers of Christ, in this country. A minute history has been given of the action of the various denominations on this subject.

The writer has aimed, as far as possible, to say what is true, and only that, without regard to the effect which it may have upon any person or party. She hopes that what she has said will be examined without bitterness,—in that serious and earnest spirit which is appropriate for the examination of so very serious a subject. It would be vain for her to indulge the hope of being wholly free from error. In the wide field which she has been called to go over, there is a possibility of many mistakes. She can only say that she has used the most honest and earnest endeavors to learn the truth.

The book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all true Christians, throughout the world. May they unite their prayers that Christendom may be delivered from so great an evil as slavery!

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PART I.

Chapter I.

Introduction

AT different times, doubt has been expressed whether the representations of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" are a fair representation of slavery as it at present exists. This work, more, perhaps, than any other work of fiction that ever was written, has been a collection and arrangement of real incidents,— of actions really performed, of words and expressions really uttered,— grouped together with reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture. His is a mosaic of gems,— this is a mosaic of facts.

Artistically considered, it might not be best to point out in which quarry and from which region each fragment of the mosaic picture had its origin; and it is equally unartistic to disentangle the glittering web of fiction, and show out of what real warp and woof it is woven, and with what real coloring dyed. But the book had a purpose entirely transcending the artistic one, and accordingly encounters, at the hands of the public, demands not usually made on fictitious works. It is treated as a reality,— sifted, tried and tested, as a reality; and therefore as a reality it may be proper that it should be defended.

The writer acknowledges that the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason,—that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is would be a work which could not be read. And all works which ever mean to give pleasure must draw a veil somewhere, or they cannot succeed.

The author will now proceed along the course of the story, from the first page onward, and develop, as far as possible, the incidents by which different parts were suggested.

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Chapter II.

Mr. Haley.

IN the very first chapter of the book we encounter the character of the negro-trader, Mr. Haley. His name stands at the head of this chapter as the representative of all the different characters introduced in the work which exhibit the trader, the kidnapper, the negro-catcher, the negro-whipper, and all the other inevitable auxiliaries and indispensable appendages of what is often called the "divinely-instituted relation" of slavery. The author's first personal observation of this class of beings was somewhat as follows:

Several years ago, while one morning employed in the duties of the nursery, a colored woman was announced. She was ushered into the nursery, and the author thought, on first survey, that a more surly, unpromising face she had never seen. The woman was thoroughly black, thick-set, firmly built, and with strongly-marked African features. Those who have been accustomed to read the expressions of the African face know what a peculiar effect is produced by a lowering, desponding expression upon its dark features. It is like the shadow of a thunder-cloud. Unlike her race generally, the woman did not smile when smiled upon, nor utter any pleasant remark in reply to such as were addressed to her. The youngest pet of the nursery, a boy about three yenrs old, walked up, and laid his little hand on her knee, and seemed astonished not to meet the quick smile which the negro almost always has in reserve for the little child. The writer thought her very cross and disagreeable, and, after a few moments' silence, asked, with perhaps a little impatience, "Do you want anything of me to-day?"

"Here are some papers," said the woman, pushing them towards her; "perhaps you would read them."

The first paper opened was a letter from

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(pp 6-20)

a thing as an advertisement for a man, "dead or alive," like the advertisement for George Harris, was ever published in the Southern States. The scene of the story in which that occurs is supposed to be laid a few years back, at the time when the black laws of Ohio were passed. That at this time such advertisements were common in the newspapers, there is abundant evidence. That they are less common now, is a matter of hope and gratulation.

In the year 1839, Mr. Theodore D. Weld made a systematic attempt to collect and arrange the statistics of slavery. A mass of facts and statistics was gathered, which were authenticated with thé most unquestionable accuracy. Some of the "one thousand witnesses," whom he brings upon the stand, were ministers, lawyers, merchants, and men of varions other callings, who were either natives of the slave states, or had been residents there for many years of their life. Many of these were slave-holders. Others of the witnesses were, or had been, slave-drivers, or officers of coasting-vessels engaged in the slave-trade.

Another part of his evidence was gathered from public speeches in Congress, in the state legislatures, and elsewhere. But the majority of it was taken from recent newspapers.

The papers from which these facts were copied were preserved and put on file in a public place, where they remained for some years, for the information of the curious. After Mr. Weld's book was completed, a copy of it was sent, through the mail, to every editor from whose paper such advertisements had been taken, and to every individual of whom any facts had been narrated, with the passages which concerned them marked.

It is quite possible that this may have had some influence in rendering such advertisements less common. Men of sense often go on doing a thing which is very absurd, or even inhuman, simply because it has always been done before them, and they follow general custom, without much reflection. When their attention, however, is çalled to it by a stranger who sees the thing from another point of view, they become immediately sensible of the impropriety of the practice, and discontinue it.

The reader will, however, be pained to notice, when he comes to the legal part of the book, that even in some of thé largest cities of our slave states this barbarity had not been entirely discontinued, in the year 1850.

The list of advertisements in Mr. Weld's book is here inserted, not to weary the reader with its painful details, but that, by running his eye over the dates of the papers quoted, and the places of their publication, he may form a fair estimate of the extent to which this atrocity was publicly practised:

The Wilmington (North Carolina) Advertiser of July 13, 1838, contains the following advertisement:

"$100 will be paid to any person who may apprehend and safely confine in any jail in this state a certain negro man, named ALFRED. And the same reward will be paid, if satisfactory evidence is given of his having been KILLED. He has one or more scars on one of his hands, caused by his having been shot.

THE CITIZENS OF ONSLOW.

Richlands, Onslow Co., May 16, 1838."

In the same column with the above, and directly under it, is the following:

"RANAWAY, my negro man RICHARD. A reward of $25 will be paid for his apprehension, DEAD or ALIVE. Satisfactory proof will only be required of his being KILLED. He has with him, in all probability, his wife, ELIZA, who ran away from Col. Thompson, now a resident of Alabama, about the time he commenced his journey to tbat state.

DURANT H. RHODES."

In the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, May 28, is the following:

"About the 1st of March last the negro man RANSOM left me without the least provocation whatever; I will give a reward of twenty dollars for said negro, if taken, DEAD OR ALIVE,—and if killed in any attempt, an advance of five dollars will be paid.

BRYANT JOHNSON.

"Crawford Co., Georgia."

See the Newbern (N. C.) Spectator, Jan. 5, 1838, for the following:

"RANAWAY from the subscriber, a negro man named SAMPSON. Fifty dollars reward will be given for the delivery of him to me, or his confinement in any jail, so that I get him; and should he resist in being taken, so that violence is necessary to arrest him, I will not hold any person liable for damages should the slave be KILLED.

ENOCH FOY.

"Jones Co., N. C."

From the Charleston (S. C.) Courier, Feb. 20, 1836:

"$300 REWARD.—Ranaway from the subscriber, in November last, his two negro men, named Billy and Pompey.

"Billy is 25 years old, and is known as the patroon of my boat for many years; in all probability he may resist; in that event 50 dollars will be paid for his HEAD."

Chapter V.

Eliza.

The writer stated in her book that Eliza was a portrait drawn from life. The inci-

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dent which brought the original to her notice may be simply narrated.

While the writer was traveling in Kentucky, many years ago, she attended church in a small country town. While there, her attention was called to a beautiful quadroon girl, who sat in one of the slips of the church, and appeared to have charge of some young children. The description of Eliza may suffice for a description of her. When the author returned from church, she inquired about the girl, and was told that she was as good and amiable as she was beautiful; that she was a pious girl, and a member of the church; and, finally, that she was owned by Mr. So-and-so. The idea that this girl was a slave struck a chill to her heart, and she said, earnestly, "O, I hope they treat her kindly."

"O, certainly," was the reply; "they think as much of her as of their own children."

"I hope they will never sell her," said a person in the company.

"Certainly they will not; a Southern gentleman, not long ago, offered her master a thousand dollars for her: but he told him that she was too good to be his wife, and he certainly should not have her for a mistress."

This is all that the writer [Stowe] knows of that girl.

With regard to the incident of Eliza's crossing the river on the ice,—as the possibility of the thing has been disputed,—the writer gives the following circumstance in confirmation.

Last spring, while the author [Stowe] was in New York, a Presbyterian clergyman, of Ohio, came to her, and said, "I understand they dispute that fact about the woman's crossing the river. Now, I know all about that, for I got the story from the very man that helped her up the bank. I know it is true, for she is now living in Canada."

It has been objected that the representation of the scene in which the plan for kidnaping Eliza, concocted by Haley, Marks and Loker, at the tavern, is a gross caricature on the state of things in Ohio.

What knowledge the author [Stowe] has had of the facilities which some justices of the peace, under the old fugitive law of Ohio, were in the habit of giving to kidnaping, may be inferred by comparing the statement in her book [Uncle Tom's Cabin] with some in her personal knowledge.

"Ye see," said Marks to Haley, stirring his punch as he did so, "ye see, we has justices [of the peace] convenient at all p'ints along shore, that does up any little jobs in our line quite reasonable [easily, cheaply bribed!].

"Tom, he does the knockin' down, and that ar; and I come in all dressed up,—shining boots,—everything first chop,—when the swearin' 's to be done. You oughter see me, now!" said Marks, in a glow of professional pride, "how I can tone it off. One day I'm Mr. Twickem, from New Orleans; 'nother day, I'm just come from my plantation on Pearl river, where I works seven hundred niggers; then, again, I come out a distant relation to Henry Clay, or some old cock in Kentuck.

"Talents is different, you know. Now, Tom's a roarer when there's any thumping or fighting to be done; but at lying he an't good, Tom an't; ye see it don't comes natural to him; but, Lord! if thar's a feller in the country that can swear to anything and everything, and put in all the circumstances and flourishes with a longer face, and carry 't through better'n I can, why, I'd like to see him, that's all!

"I b'lieve, my heart, I could get along, and make through, even if justices [of the peace] were more particular than they is. Sometimes I rather wish they was more particular; 't would be a heap more relishin' if they was,—more fun, yer know."

In the year 1839, the writer [Stowe] received into her family, as a servant, a girl from Kentucky. She had been the slave of one of the lowest and most brutal families, with whom she had been brought up, in a log-cabin, in a state of half-barbarism. In proceeding to give her religious instruction, the author [Stowe] heard, for the first time in her life, an inquiry which she had not supposed possible to be made in America:—"Who is Jesus Christ, now, anyhow?"

When the author [Stowe] told her the history of the love and life and death of Christ, the girl seemed wholly overcome; tears streamed down her cheeks; and she exclaimed, piteously, "Why didn't nobody never tell me this before?"

"But," said the writer [Stowe] to her, "haven't you ever seen the Bible?"

"Yes, I have seen missus a-readin' on 't sometimes; but, law sakes! she's just a-readin' on 't 'cause she could; don't s'pose it did her no good, no way."

She said she had been to one or two camp-meetings in her life, but "didn't notice very particular."

At all events, the story certainly made great impression on her, and had such an effect in improving her conduct, that the writer [Stowe] had great hopes of her.

On inquiring into her history, it was discovered that, by the laws of Ohio, she was legally entitled to her freedom, from the fact of her having been brought into the state, and left there, temporarily, by the consent of her mistresa. These facts being

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properly authenticated before the proper authorities, papers attesting her freedom were drawn up, and it was now supposed that all danger of pursuit was over. After she had remained in the family for some months, word was sent, from various sources, to Professor Stowe, that the girl's young master was over, looking for her, and that, if care were not taken, she would be conveyed back into slavery.

Professor Stowe called on the magistrate who had authenticated her papers, and inquired whether they were not sufficient to protect her. The reply was,

"Certainly they are, in law, if she could have a fair hearing [due process as per the Constitution]; but they will come to your house in the night, with an officer and a warrant; they will take her before Justice D—, and swear to her [being a slave]. He's the man that does all this kind of business, and he'll deliver her up, and there'll be an end to it."

Mr. Stowe then inquired what could be done; and was recommended to carry her to some place of security till the inquiry for her was over. Accordingly, that night, a brother of the author, with Professor Stowe, performed for the fugitive that office which the senator is represented as performing for Eliza. They drove about ten miles on a solitary road, crossed the creek at a very dangerous fording, and presented themselves, at midnight, at the house of John Van Zandt, a noble-minded Kentuckian, who had performed the good deed which the author, in her story [Uncle Tom's Cabin], ascribes to Van Tromp.

After some rapping at the door, the worthy owner of the mansion appeared, candle in hand, as has been narrated.

"Are you the man that would save a poor colored girl from kidnappers?" was the first question.

"Guess I am," was the prompt response, "where is she?"

"Why, she's here."

"But how did you come?"

"I crossed the creek."

"Why, the Lord helped you!" said he; "I shouldn't dare cross it myself in the night. A man and his wife, and five children, were drowned there, a little while ago."

The reader may be interested to know that the poor girl never was re-taken; that she married well in Cincinnati, is a very respectable woman, and the mother of a large family of children.

Chapter VI.

Uncle Tom.

The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and yet the writer [Stowe] has received more confirmations of that character, and from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book [Uncle Tom's Cabin].

Many people have said to her, "I knew an Uncle Tom in such and such a Southern State." All the histories of this kind which have thus been related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small volume. The author will relate a few of them.

While visiting in an obscure town in Maine, in the family of a friend, the conversation happened to turn upon this subject, and the gentleman with whose family she was staying related the following.

He said that, when on a visit to his brother, in New Orleans, some years before, he found in his possession a most valuable negro man, of such remarkable probity and honesty that his brother literally trusted him with all he had. He had frequently seen him take out a handful of bills, without looking at them, and hand them to this servant, bidding him go and provide what was necessary for the family, and bring him the change. He remonstrated with his brother on this imprudence, but the latter replied that be had had such proof of this servant's impregnable conscientiousness that he felt it safe to trust him to any extent.

The history of the servant was this. He had belonged to a man in Baltimore, who, having a general prejudice against all the religious exercises of slaves, did all that he could to prevent his having any time for devotional duties, and strictly forbade him to read the Bible and pray, either by himself, or with the other servants; and because, like a certain man of old, named Daniel, he constantly disobeyed this unchristian edict, his master inflicted upon him that punish ment which a master always has in his power to inflict,—he sold him into perpetual exile from his wife and children, down to New Orleans.

The gentleman who gave the writer [Stowe] this information says that, although not himself a religious man at the time, he was so struck with the man's piety that he said to his brother, "I hope you will never do anything to deprive this man of his religious privileges, for I think a judgment will come upon you if you do."

To this his brother replied that he should be very foolish to do it, since

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(pp 24-33)

when many seamstresses get a dollar for it; says she does it because she's poor, and has no friends; thinks you had better be careful in your conversation, and not let her know what prices are, or else she will get spoiled, and go to raising her price,—these sewing-women are so selfish.

When Marie St. Clare has the misfortune to live in a free state, there is no end to her troubles. Her cook is always going off for better wages and more comfortable quarters; her chamber-maid, strangely enough, won't agree to be chambermaid and seamstress both for half wages, and so she deserts. Marie's kitchen-cabinet, therefore, is always in a state of revolution; and she often declares, with affecting earnestness, that servants are the torment of her life.

If her husband endeavor to remonstrate, or suggest another mode of treatment, he is a hard-hearted, unfeeling man; "he doesn't love her, and she always knew he didn't;" and so he is disposed of.

But, when Marie comes under a [politician-made] system of [unconstitutional] laws which gives her absolute control over her dependants,—which enables her to separate them, at her pleasure, from their dearest family connections, or to inflict upon them the most disgraceful and violent punishments, without even the restraint which seeing the execution might possibly produce,—then it is that the character arrives at full maturity. Human nature is no worse at the South than at the North; but law at the South distinctly provides for and protects the worst abuses to which that nature is liable.

It is often supposed that domestic servitude in slave states is a kind of paradise; that house-servants are invariably pets; that young mistresses are always fond of their "mammies," and young masters always handsome, good-natured and indulgent.

Let any one in Old England or New England look about among their immediate acquaintances, and ask how many there are who would use absolute despotic power amiably in a family, especially over a class degraded by servitude, ignorant, indolent, deceitful, provoking, as slaves almost necessarily are, and always must be.

Let them look into their own hearts, and ask themselves if they would dare to be trusted with such a power. Do they not find in themselves temptations to be unjust to those who are inferiors and dependants? Do they not find themselves tempted to be irritable and provoked, when the service of their families is negligently performed?

And, if they had the power to inflict cruel punishments, or to have them inflicted by sending the servant out to some place of correction, would they not be tempted to use that liberty?

With regard to those degrading punishments to which females are subjected, by being sent to professional whippers, or by having such functionaries sent for to the house,—as John Caphart testifies that he has often been, in Baltimore,—what can be said of their influence both on the superior and on the inferior class? It is very painful indeed to contemplate this subject.

The [non-Southern] mind instinctively shrinks from it; but still it is a very serious question whether it be not our duty to encounter this pain, that our sympathies may be quickened into more active exercise.

For this reason, we give here the testimony of a gentleman [Dr. Howe] whose accuracy will not be doubted, and who subjected himself to the pain of being an eye-witness to a scene of this kind in the calaboose in New Orleans. As the reader will perceive from the account, it was a scene of such every-day occurrence as not to excite any particular remark, or any expression of sympathy from those of the same condition and color with the sufferer.

When our missionaries first went to India, it was esteemed a duty among Christian nations to make themselves acquainted with the cruelties and atrocities of idolatrous worship, as a means of quickening our zeal to send them the gospel.

If it be said that we in the free states have no such interest in slavery, as we do not support it, and have no power to prevent it, it is replied that slavery does exist in the District of Columbia, which belongs to the whole United States; and that the free states are, before God, guilty of the crime of [unconstitutionally] continuing it there, unless they will honestly do what in them lies for its extermination.

The subjoined account was written by the benevolent Dr. Howe, whose labors in behalf of the blind have rendered his name dear to humanity, and was sent in a letter to the Hon. Charles Sumner.

If any one think it too painful to be perused, let him ask himself if God will hold those guiltless who suffer a system to continue, the details of which they cannot even read. That this describes a common scene in the calaboose, we shall by and by produce other witnesses to show.

Letter by Dr. Howe

I have passed ten days in New Orleans, not unprofitably, I trust, in examining the public

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institutions,—the schools, asylums, hospitals, prisons, &c. With the exception of the first, there is little hope of amelioration. I know not how much merit there may be in their system; but I do know that, in the administration of the penal code, there are abominations which should bring down the fate of Sodom [Genesis 19:24-25] upon the city. If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it.

In the negro's apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white man, and which, for a moment, stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature.

Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes and colors, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl flat upon her face, on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied, and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and, fastened around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she was entirely naked.

By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood followed after it.

The poor creature writhed and shrieked, and, in a voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony, screamed to her master, who stood at her head, "O, spare my life! don't cut my soul out!" But still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody maas of raw and quivering muscle [flesh].

It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but, alas! what could I do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity!

This was in a public and regularly-organized prison; the punishment was one recognized and authorized by the law.

But think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all. She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee.

Or, if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on-his own premises, and brutalize himself there.

A shocking part of this horrid punishment was its publicity, as I have said; it was in a court-yard surrounded by galleries, which were filled with colored persons of all sexes—runaway slaves, committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale. You would naturally suppose they crowded forward, and gazed, horror-stricken, at the brutal spectacle below; but they did not; many of them hardly noticed it, and many were entirely indifferent to it. They went on in their childish pursuits, and some were laughing outright in the distant parts of the galleries; so low can man, in God's image, be sunk to brutality.

IT is with pleasure that we turn from the dark picture just presented, to the character of the generous and noble-hearted St. Clare, wherein the fairest picture of our Southern brother is presented.

It has been the writer's object to separate carefully, as far as possible, the system from the men. It is her [Stowe's] sincere belief that, while the irresponsible power of slavery is such that no human being ought ever to possess it, probably that power was never exercised more leniently than in many cases in the Southern States. She has been astonished to see how, under all the disadvantages which attend the early possession of arbitrary power, all the temptations which every reflecting mind must see will arise from the possession of this power in various forms, there are often developed such fine and interesting traits of character. To say that these cases are common, alas! is not in our power. Men know human nature too well to believe us, if we should.

But the more dreadful the evil to be assailed, the more careful should we be to be just in our apprehensions, and to balance the horror which certain abuses must necessarily incite, by a consideration of those excellent and redeeming traits which are often found in individuals connected with the system.

The twin brothers, Alfred and Augustine St. Clare, represent two classes of men which are to be found in all countries. They are the radically aristocratic and democratic men. The aristocrat by position is not always the aristocrat by nature, and vice versa; but the aristocrat by nature, whether he be in a higher or lower position in society, is he who, though he may be just, generous and humane, to those whom he considers his equals, is entirely insensible to the wants, and sufferings, and common humanity, of those whom he considers the lower orders. The sufferings of a countess would make him weep; the sufferings of a seamstress are quite another matter.

On the other hand, the democrat is often found in the highest position of life. To this man, superiority to his brother is a thing which he can never boldly and nakedly as-

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sert without a secret pain. In the lowest and humblest walk of life, he acknowledges the sacredness of a common humanity; and however degraded by the opinions and institutions of society any particular class may be, there is an instinctive feeling in his soul which teaches him that they are men of like passions with himself.

Such men have a penetration which at once sees through all the false shows of outward custom which make one man so dissimilar to another, to those great generic capabilities, sorrows, wants and weaknesses, wherein all men and women are alike; and there is no such thing as making them realize that one order of human beings have any prescriptive right over another order, or that the tears and sufferings of one are not just as good as those of another order.

That such men are to be found at the South in the relation of slave-masters, that when so found they cannot and will not be deluded by any of the shams and sophistry wherewith slavery has been defended, that they look upon it as a relic of a barbarous age, and utterly scorn and contemn all its apologists, we can abundantly show. Many of the most illustrious Southern men of the [American] Revolution were of this class, and many men of distinguished position of later day have entertained the same sentiments.

Witness the following letter of Patrick Henry [1736-1799], the sentiments of which are so much an echo of those of St. Clare that the reader might suppose one to be a copy of the other:

Letter of Patrick Henry.

Hanover, January 18th, 1773

Dear Sir: I take this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of Anthony Benezet's book against the slave-trade; I thank you for it.

Is it not a little surprising that the professors of Christianity, whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, in cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong? What adds to the wonder is, that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages.

Times that seem to have pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences, and refined morality, have brought into general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny which our more rude and barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested.

Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty,—-that in such an age and in such a country we find men professing a religion the most mild, humane, gentle and generous, adopting such a principle, as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty! Every thinking, honest rejects it in speculation. How free in practice from conscientious motives!

Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot, justify it. However culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and lament my want [lack] of conformity to them.

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence for slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished-for reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity. It is the furthest advance we can make towards justice. It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.

Ed. Note: Patrick Henry is right to refer to such pretended "Christians" as merely "professors of Christianity," a depravity their "more honest ancestors detested."
Rev. Parker Pillsbury would later excommunicate such alleged Christian clergy, as not in fact Christian.
The vast majority, 99%, of U.S. were wrong on slavery.
They “had simply no moral sense,” said Kentucky clergyman Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, p 9. Their scandalous behavior was the “acmé of piratical turpitude,” says Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 19.

What a sorrowful thing it is that such men live an inglorious life, drawn along by the general current of society, when they ought to be its regenerators! Has God endowed them with such nobleness of soul, such clearness of perception, for nothing? Should they, to whom he has given superior powers of insight and feeling, live as all the world live?

Southern men of this class have often risen up to reprove the men of the North, when they are drawn in to apologize for the system of slavery. Thus, on one occasion, a representative from one of the northern states, a gentleman now occupying the very highest rank of distinction and official station, used in Congress the following language:

The great relation of servitude, in some form or other, with greater or less departure from the theocratic equality of men, is inseparable from our nature. Domestic slavery is not, in my judgment, to be act down as an immoral or irreligious relation. The slaves of this country are better clothed and fed than the peasantry of some of the most prosperous atates of Europe.

He was answered by Mr. Mitchell, of Tennessee, in these words:

Sir, I do not go the length of the gentleman from Massachusetts, and hold that the existence of slavery in this country is almost a blessing. On the contrary, I am firmly settled in the opinion that it is a great curse,—one of the greatest that could have been interwoven in our sytem. I, Mr. Chairman, am one of those whom these poor wretches call masters. I do not task them; I feed and clothe them well, but yet, alas! they are slaves, and slavery is a curse in any shape. It is no doubt true that there are persons in Europe far more degraded than our slaves,— worse fed, worse

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(pp 37-46)

Chapter XI.

Select Incidents of Lawful Trade.

IN this chapter of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" were recorded some of the most highly-wrought and touching incidents of the slave-trade. It will be well to authenticate a few of them.

One of the first sketches presented to view is an account of the separation of a very old, decrepit negro woman from her young son, by a sheriff's sale. The writer [Stowe] is sorry to say that not the slightest credit for invention is due to her in this incident. She found it, almost exactly as it stands, in the published journal of a yonng Southerner, related as a scene to which he was eye-witness. The only circumstance which she has omitted in the narrative was one of additional inhumanity and painfulness which he had delineated. He represents the boy as being bought by a planter, who fettered his hands, and tied a rope round his neck which he attached to the neck of his horse, thus compelling the child to trot by his side. This incident alone was suppressed by the author.

Another scene of fraud and cruelty, in the same chapter, is described as perpetrated by a Kentucky slave-master, who sells a woman to a trader, and induces her to go with him by the deceitful assertion that she is to be taken down the river a short distance, to work in the same hotel with her husband. This was an instance which occurred under the writer's own observation, some years since, when she was going down the Ohio river. The woman was very respectable both in appearance and dress. The writer recalls her image now vith distinctness, attired with great neatness in a white wrapper, her clothing and hair all arranged with evident care, and having with her a prettily-dressed boy about seven years of age. She had also a hair trunk of clothing, which showed that she had been carefully and respectably brought up. It will be seen, in perusing the account, that the incident is somewhat altered to suit the purpose of the story, the woman being there represented as carrying with her a young infant.

The custom of unceremoniously separating the infant from its mother, when the latter is about to be taken from a Northern to a Southern market, is a matter of every-day notoriety in the trade. It is not done occasionally and sometimes, but always, whenever there is occasion for it; and the mother's agonies are no more regarded than those of a cow when her calf is separated from her.

The reason of this is, that the care and raising of children is no part of the intention or provision of a Southern plantation. They are a trouble; they detract from the value of the mother as a field-hand, and it is more expensive to raise them than to buy them ready raised; they are therefore left behind in the making up of a coffle. Not longer ago than last summer, the writer was conversing with Thomas Strother, a slave minister of the gospel in St. Louis, for whose emancipation she was making some effort. He incidentally mentioned to her a scene which he had witnessed but a short time before, in which a young woman of his acquaintance came to him almost in a state of distraction, telling him that she had been sold to go South with a trader, and leave behind her nursing infant.

In Lewis Clark's narrative he mentions that a master in his neighborhood sold a woman and child to a trader, with the charge that he should not sell the child from its mother. The man, however, traded off the child in the very next town, in payment of his tavern-bill.

The following testimony is from a gentleman who writes from New Orleans to the National Era. This writer says:

While at Robinson, or Tyree Springs, twenty miles from Nashville, on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee, my hostess said to me, one day, "Yonder comes a gang of slaves, chained."

I went to the road-side and viewed them. For the better answering my purpose of observation, I stopped the white man in front, who was at his ease in a one-horse wagon, and asked him if those slaves were for sale. I counted them and observed their position. They were divided by three one-horse wagons, each containing a man-merchant, so arranged as to command the whole gang.

Some were unchained; sixty were chained in two companies thirty in each, the right hand of one to the left hand of the other opposite one, making fifteen each side of a large ox-chain, to which every hand was fastened, and necessarily compelled to hold up,—men and women promiscuously, and about in equal proportions,—all young people. No children here, except a few in a wagon behind, which were the only children in the four gangs.

I said to a respectable mulatto woman in the house, "Is it true that the negro-traders take mothers from their babies?"

"Massa, it is true; for here, last week, such a girl [naming her], who lives about a mile off, was taken after dinner,—knew nothing of it in the morning,—sold, put into the gang, and her baby given away to a neighbor. She was a stout young woman, and brought a good price."

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(pp 48-66)

PART II.

Chapter I.

Introduction

THE New York Courier and Enquirer of November 5th contained an article which has been quite valuable to the author, as summing up, in a clear, concise and intelligible form, the principal [demonized] objections which may be urged to Uncle Tom's Cabin [1852]. It is here quoted in full, as the foundation of the remarks in the following pages.

Ed. Note: Be advised that the media have a multi-century pattern of disinformation with respect to slavery, tobacco farmers. Yes, slavery was disproportionately by the latter, a fact you have NOT learned from the media—nor much of the truth about tobacco.
The media has a rigorous policy of censorship, adhered to for centuries. See

The author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that writer states, has committed false-witness against thousands and millions of her fellow-men.

She has done it [he says] by attaching to them as slaveholders, in the eyes of the world, the guilt of the abuses of an institution of which they are absolutely guiltless. Her story is so devised as to present slavery in three dark aspects:

first, the cruel treatment of the slaves;

second, the separation of families; and

third, their want of religious instruction.

To show the first, she causes a reward to be offered for the recovery of a runaway slave, "dead or alive," when no reward with such an alternative was ever heard of, or dreamed of, south of Mason and Dixon's line, and it has been decided over and over again in Southern courts that "a slave who is merely flying away cannot be killed." She puts such language as this into the mouth of one of her speakers:—"The master who goes furthest and does the worst only uses within limits the power that the law gives him;" when, in fact, the civil code of the very state where it is represented the language was uttered—Louisiana—declares that

"The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigor, nor so as to maim or mutilate him, or to expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death."

And provides for a compulsory sale:

"When the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slaves, and the judge shall deem proper to prononce, besides the penalty established for such cases, that the slave be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of reach of the power which the master has abused."

"If any person whatsoever shall wilfully kill his slave, or the slave of another person, the said person, being convicted thereof, shall be tried and condemned agreeably to the laws."

In the General [Supreme] Court of Virginia last year, in the [torture-murder] case of Souther v. the Commonwealth [48 Va 673 (1851)], it was held that the killing of a slave by his master and owner, by wilful and excessive whipping, is murder in the first degree, though it may not have been the purpose of the master and owner to kill the slave! And it is not six months since Governor Johnston, of Virginia, pardoned a slave who killed his inofiter, who was beating him with brutal severity.

And yet, in the face of such laws and decisions as these, Mrs. Stowe winds up a long series of cruelties upon her other black personages, by causing her faultless hero, Tom, to be literally whipped to death in Louisiana, by his master Legree; and these acts, which the laws make criminal, and punish as such, she sets forth in the most repulsive colors, to illustrate the institution of slavery!

So, too, in reference to the separation of children from their parents. A considerable part of the plot is made to hinge upon the selling, in Louisiana, of the child Eliza, "eight or nine years old," away from her mother; when, had its inventor looked in the statute-book of Louisiana, she would have found the following language:

"Every person is expressly prohibited from selling separately from their mothers the children who shall not have attained the full age of ten years."

"Be it further enacted, That if any person or persons shall sell the mother of any slave child or children under the age of ten years, separate from said child or children, or shall, the mother living, sell any slave child or children of ten years of age, or under, separate from said mother, said person or persons shall be fined not less than one thousand nor more than two thousand dollars, and be imprisoned in the public jail for a period of not less than six months nor more than one year."

The privation of religious instruction, as represented by Mrs. Stowe, is utterly unfounded in fact. The largest churches in the Union consist entirely of slaves. The first African church in Louisville, which numbers fifteen hundred persons, and the first African church in Augusta, which numbers thirteen liundred, are specimens. On multitudes of the large plantations in the different parts of the South the ordinances of the gospel are as regularly maintained, by competent ministers, as in any other communities, north or soutri. A larger proportion of the slave population are in communion with some Christian church, than of the white population in any part of the country. A very considerable portion of every southern congregation, either in city or country, is sure to consist of blacks; whereas, of our northern churches, not a colored person is to be seen in one out of fifty.

The peculiar falsity of this whole book consists in making exceptional or impossible cases the rep-

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(pp 68-69)

hold the legal relation still, only because not yet clear with regard to the best way of changing it, so as to better the condition of those held. Such are most earnest advocates for state emancipation, and are friends of anything, written in a right spirit, which tends in that direction. From such the author [Stowe] ever receives criticisms with pleasure.

She has endeavored to lay before the world, in the fullest manner, all that can be objected to her work, that both sides may have an opportunity of impartial hearing

When citing "Uncle Tom's Cabin," though entirely unaware and unexpectant of the importance which would be attached to its statements and opinions, the author [Stowe] of that work was anxious, from love of consistency, to have some understanding of the laws of the slave system. She had in hand for reference, while writing, the Code Noir of Louisiana, and a sketch of the laws relating to slavery in the different states, by Judge Stroud, of Philadelphia.

Ed. Note: Full Citation: George M. Stroud (1795-1875), A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1827)

This work, professing to have been compiled with great care from the latest editions of the statute-books of the several states, the author supposed to be a sufficient guide for the writing of a work of fiction.*

As the accuracy of those statements which relate to the slave-laws has been particularly contested, a more especial inquiry has been made in this direction. Under the guidance and with the assistance of legal gentlemen of high standing, the writer [Stowe] has proceeded to examine the statements of Judge Stroud with regard to statute-law, and to follow them up with some inquiry into the decisions of courts. The result has been an increasing conviction on her part that the impressions first derived from Judge Stroud's work were correct; and the author now can only give the words of St. Clare, as the best possible expression of the sentiments and opinion which this course of reading has awakened in her mind.

This cursed business, accursed of God and man,—what is it? Strip it of all its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,—because I know how, and can do it,—therefore I may steal all he has, keep it, and give him only such and so much as suits my fancy!

Whatever is too hard, too dirty, too disagreeable for me, I may set Quashy to doing.

Because I don't like work, Quashy shall work. Because the sun burns me, Quashy shall stay in the sun.

Quashy shall earn the money, and I will spend it.

Quashy shall lie down in every puddle, that I may walk over dry shod.

Quashy shall do my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and have such a chance of getting to heaven at last as I find convenient.

This I take to be about what slavery is.

I defy anybody on earth to read our slave-code, as it stands in our law-books, and make anything else of it. Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse. And the only reason why the land don't sink under it [yet], like Sodom and Gomorrah, is because it is used in a way infinitely better than it is.

For pity's sake, for shame's sake, because we are men born of women, and not savage beasts, many of us do not, and dare not,—we would scorn to use the full power which our savage laws put into our hands. And he who goes the furthest, and does the worst, only uses within limits the power that the law gives him.

The author [Stowe] still holds to the opinion that slavery in itself, as legally defined in law-books and expressed in the records of courts, is [Ed. Note: as Wesley had said] the SUM AND ESSENCE OF ALL ABUSES; and she still clings to the [naif] hope that there are many men at the South infinitely better than their laws; and after the reader has read all the extracts which she has to make, for the sake of a common humanity they will hope the same.

The author must state, with regard to some passages which she must quote, that the language of certain enactments was so incredible that she would not take it on the authority of any compilation whatever, but copied it with her own hand from the latest edition of the statute-book where it stood and still stands.

Chapter II.

What is Slavery?

THE author will now enter into a consideration of slavery as it stands revealed in slave-law.

What is it, according to the definition of law-books and of legal interpreters?

"A slave," says the law of Louisiana, "is one who is in the power of a master [extortioner], to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry nnd his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master."—Civil Code, Art. 35.

South Carolina says "slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, TO ALL INTENTS, CONSTRUCTIONS AND PURPOSES WHATSOEVER."—2 Brev. Dig. 229; Prince's Digest, 446.

Let the reader reflect on the extent of the meaning in this last clause. Judge
____________

*In this connection it may be well to state that the [1827] work of Judge Stroud is now [1853] out of print, but that a work of the same character is in course of preparation by William I. Bowditch, Esq., of Boston, which will bring the subject out, by the assistance of the latest editions of statutes, and the most recent decisions of courts.

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(pp 71-75)

ture, under the king's peace, with malice aforethought, express or implied, is murder at common law. Is not a slave a reaaonable creature?—is he not a human being? And the meaning of this phrase, reasonable creature, is, a human being. For the killing a lunatic, an idiot, or even a child unborn, is murder, as much as the killing a philosopher; and has not the slave as much reason as a lunatic, an idiot, or an unborn child?

Thus triumphantly, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era [1820] and in the State of Mississippi, has it been made to appear that the slave is a reasonable creature,—a human being!

What sort of system, what sort of a public sentiment, was that which made this argument necessary?

And let us look at some of the admissions of this argument with regard to the nature of slavery. According to the Judge, it is depriving human beings of many of their rights. Thus he says:

"Because individuals may have been deprived of many of their rights by society, it does not follow that they have been deprived of all their rights."

Again, he says of the slave:

"He is still a human being, and possesses all those rights of which he is not deprived by the positive provisions of the law."

Here he admits that the provisions of law deprive the slave of natural rights. Again he say:

"The right of the master exists not by force of the law of nature or of nations, but by virtue only of the positive law of the state.

According to the decision of this [Mississippi Supreme Court pro-slavery] judge, therefore, slavery exists by the same right that robbery or oppression of any kind does,—the right of ability. A gang of robbers associated into a society have rights over all the neighboring property that they can acquire, of precisely the same kind.

With the same unconscious serenity does the law apply that principle of force and robbery which is the essence of slavery, and show how far the master may proceed in appropriating another human being as his property.

The question arises, May a master give a woman to one person, and her unborn children to another one? Let us hear the case argued.

The unfortunate mother selected as the test point of this interesting legal principle comes to our view in the will of one Samuel Marksbury, under the style and denomination of "my negro wench Pen." Said Samuel states in his will that, for the good will and love he bears to his own children, he gives said negro wench Pen to son Samuel, and all her future increase to daughter Rachael. When daughter Rachael, therefore, marries, her husband sets up a claim for this increase,—as it is stated, quite off-hand, that the "wench had several children."

Here comes a beautifully interesting case, quite stimulating to legal acumen. Inferior court decides that Samuel Marksbury could not have given away unborn children on the strength of the legal maxim, "Nemo dat quad non habet,"—i. e., "Nobody can give what he has not got,"—which certainly one should think sensible and satisfactory enough. The case, however, is appealed, and reversed in the superior court; and now let us hear the reasoning.

The Judge acknowledges the force of the maxim above quoted,—says, as one would think any man might say, that it is quite a correct maxim,—the only difficulty being that it does not at all apply to the present case. Let us hear him:

He who is the absolute owner of a thing, owns all its faculties for profit or increase; and he may, no doubt, grannt the profits or increase, as well as the thing itself. Thus, it is every day's practice to grant the future rents or profits of real estate; and it is held that a man may grant the wool of a flock of sheep for years.

See also p. 33, Fanny v. Bryant, 4 J. J. Marshall's Rep., 868. In this almost precisely the same language is used. If the reader will proceed, he will find also this principle applied with equal clearness to the hiring, selling, mortgaging of unborn children; and the perfect legal nonchalance of these discussions is only comparable to running a dissecting-knife through the course of all the heart-strings of a living subject, for the purpose of demonstrating the laws of nervous contraction.

Judge [George M.] Stroud [1795-1875], in his sketch of the slave-laws [Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1827], page 99, lays down for proof the following assertion: That the penal codes of the slave states bear much more severely on slaves than on white persons. He introduces his consideration of this proposition by the following humane and sensible remarks:

A being, ignorant of letters, unenlightened by religion, and deriving but little instruction from good example, cannot be supposed to have right conceptions as to the nature and extent of moral or political obligations. This remark, with but a slight qualification, is applicable to the condition of the slave. It has been just shown that the benefits of education are not conferred upon him, while his chance of acquiring a knowledge of the precepts of the gospel is so remote as scarcely to be appreciated. He may be regarded, therefore,

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as almost without the capacity to comprehend the force of laws; and, on this account, such as are designed for his government should be recommended by their simplicity and mildness.

His condition suggests another motive for tenderness on his behalf in these particulars. He is unable to read, and holding little or no communication with those who are better informed than himself, how is he to become acquainted with the fact that a law for his observance has been made?

To exact obedience to a law which has not been promulgated,—which is unknown to the subject of it—has ever [always] been deemed most unjust and tyrannical. The reign of [crazed Roman Emperor] Caligula [27 A.D. - 31 A.D.], were it obnoxious to no other reproach than this, would never cease to be remembered with abhorrence.

The lawgivers of the slaveholding states seem, in the formation of their penal codes, to have been uninfluenced by these claims of the slave upon their compassionate consideration. The hardened convict moves their sympathy, and is to be taught the laws before he is expected to obey them; yet the guiltless slave is subjected to an extensive system of cruel enactments, of no part of which, probably, has he ever heard.

Parts of this system apply to the slave exclusively, and for every infraction a large retribution is demanded; while, with respect to offences for which whites as well as slaves are amenable, punishments of much greater seventy are inflicted upon the latter than upon the former.

This heavy charge of Judge Stroud is sustained by twenty pages of proof, showing the very great disproportion between the number of offences made capital for slaves, and those that are so for whites. Concerning this, we find the following cool remark in Wheeler's Law of Slavery, page 222, note.

Much has been made of the disparity of punishment between the white inhabitants and the slaves and negroes of the same state; that slaves are punished with much more severity, for the commission of similar crimes, by white persons, than the latter.

The charge is undoubtedly true. It must be remembered that the primary object of the enactment of penal laws, is the protection and security of those who make them.

The slave has no agency in making them. He is indeed one cause of the apprehended evils to the other class, which those laws are expected to remedy. That he should be held amenable for a violation of those rules established for the security of the other, is the natural result of the state in which he is placed. And the severity of those rules will always bear a relation to that danger, real or ideal [imagined], of the other class.

It has been so among all nations, and will ever continue to be so, while the disparity between bond and free remains.

A striking example of a legal decision of this [pro-torture] purport is given in Wheeler's Law of Slavery, page 224. The case, apart from legal technicalities may be thus briefly stated:

The defendant, Mann, had hired a slave-woman for a year. During this time, the slave committed some slight offence, for which the defendant undertook to chastise her. While in the act of doing so, the slave ran off, whereat he shot at and wounded her.

[Mann was arrested and given a jury trial.] The judge in the inferior [lower] court charged the jury that if they believed the punishment was cruel and unwarrantable, and disproportioned to the offence, in law the defendant was guilty, as he had only a special property in the slave. The jury finding evidence that the punishment had been cruel, unwarrantable and disproportioned to the offence, found verdict against the defendant. But on what ground?—Because, according to the law of North Carolina, cruel, unwarrantable, disproportionate punishment of a slave from a master, is an indictable offense? No. They decided against the defendant, not because the punishment was cruel and unwarrantable, but because he was not the person who had the right to inflict it, "as he had only a SPECIALright of property in the slave."

The defendant appealed to a higher court; and the decision was reversed, on the ground that the hirer has for the time being all the rights of the master. The remarks of Judge Ruffin are so characteristic, and so strongly express the conflict between the feelings of the humane judge and the logical necessity of a strict interpreter of slave-law, that we shall quote largely from it. One cannot but admire the unflinching calmness with which a man, evidently possessed of honorable and humane feelings, walks through the most extreme and ternble results and conclusions, in obedience to the laws of legal truth. Thus he says:

A judge cannot but lament, when such cases as the present are brought into judgment. It is impossible that the reasons on which they go can be appreciated, but [except] where institutions similar to our own exist, and are thoroughly understood.

The struggle, too, in the judge's own breast, between the feelings of the man and the duty of the magistrate, is a severe one, presenting strong temptation to put aside such questions, if it be possible.

It is useless, however, to complain of things inherent in our political state. And it is criminal in a court to avoid any responsibility which the laws impose.

With whatever reluctance, therefore, it is done, the court is compelled to express an opinion upon the extent of the dominion of the master over the slave in North Carolina. The indictment charges a battery on Lydia, a slave of Elizabeth Jones . . . .

The inquiry here is, whether a cruel and unreasonable battery on a slave by the hirer is indictable. The judge below instructed the jury that it is. He seems to have put it on the ground, that the defendant had but a special property.

Our laws uniformly treat the master, or other person having the possession

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and command of the slave, as entitled to the same extent of authority. The object is the same, the service of the slave; and the same [extortion] powers must be confided. In a criminal proceeding, and, indeed, in reference to all other persons but the general owner, the hirer and possessor of the slave, in relation to both rights and duties, is, for the time being, the owner. . . . But, upon the general question whether the owner is answerable criminaliter, for a battery upon his own slave, or other exercise of authority of force, not forbidden by statute, the [demonized, Constitution-ignoring] court entertains but little doubt.

That he is so liable has never been decided; nor, so far as is known, been hitherto contended. There has been no prosecution of the sort.

The established habits and uniform practice of the country, in this respect, is the best evidence of the portion of power deemed by the whole community requisite to the preservation of the master's dominion. If we thought differently, we could not set our notions in array against the judgment of everybody else, and say that this or that authority may be safely lopped off.

This has indeed been assimilated at the bar to the other domestic relations: and arguments drawn from the well-established principles, which confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed on us.

The [demonized] court does not recognise their application There is no likeness between the cases. They are in opposition to each other, and there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery; and a greater cannot be imagined.

In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the youth born to equal rights with that governor on whom the duty devolves of training the young to usefulness, in a station which he is afterwards to assume among freemen. To such an end, and with such a subject, moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural means; and, for the most part, they are found to suffice. Moderate force is superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fails, it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and the ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immoderatrly inflicted by a private person.

With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security and the public safety: the subject, one [unconstitutionally] doomed, in his own person and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits.

What moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being, to convince him what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can never be true,—that he is thus to labor upon a principle of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness!

Such services can only be expected from one who has no will of his own; who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body [unlimited right to torture]. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect.

THE POWER OF THE MASTER MUST BE ABSOLUTE, TO RENDER [extort] THE SUBMISSION OF THE SLAVE PERFECT.

I most freely confess my sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man can. And, as a principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it. But, in the actual condition of things, it must be so. There is no remedy. This [torture] discipline belongs to the state of slavery. They cannot be disunited without abrogating at once the rights of the master, and absolving the slave from his subjection. It constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and the free portions of our population. But it is inherent in the relation of master and slave.

That there may be particular instances of cruelty and deliberate barbarity [e.g., the Souther case], where in conscience the law might properly interfere, is most probable. The difficulty is to determine where a court may properly begin.

Ed. Note: Again, the judges are being untruthful. It is easy to know where to begin, e.g.,

Merely in the abstract, it may well be asked which power of the master accords with right. The answer will probably sweep away all of them.

But we [demonized judges] cannot look at the matter in that [moral] light. The truth is that we are forbidden to enter upon a train of general reasoning on the subject.

Ed. Note: By judges' lifelong pattern of morally depravity so pervasive as to have become "dead in trespasses and sins" [Ephesians 2:1]," resistant to moral truth, perseveringly defending evil, having seared the conscience [1 Tim. 4:2], and quenching the Holy Spirit [1 Thess. 5:19].
That is a self-induced awful paralysis of the moral sense [abulia/anomie], when deeds unholiest and crimes most fearful cease any longer to affect the nerve and reasoning.—See p 128, infra.

We [thus depraved] cannot allow the right of the master to be brought into discussion in the courts of justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible that there is no appeal from his master; that his power is, in no instance, usurped, but is conferred by the laws of man, at least, if not by the law of God. The danger would be great, indeed, if the tribunals of justice should be called on to graduate the punishment appropriate to every temper and every dereliction of menial duty.

No man can anticipate the many and aggravated provocations of the master which the slave would be constantly stimulated by his own passions, or the instigation of others, to give; or the consequent wrath of the
master, prompting him to bloody vengeance upon the turbulent traitor; a vengeance generally practiced with impunity, by reason of its privacy. The court, therefore disclaims the [habeas corpus] power of changing the relation in which these parts of our people stand to each other.

I repeat, that I would gladly have avoided this ungrateful question. But, being brought to it, the court is compelled to declare that while slavery [unconstitutionally] exists amongst us in its present state, or until it shall seem fit to the legislature to interpose express enactments to the contrary, it will be the imperative duty of the judges to recognize the full dominion of the owner over the slave, except where the exercise of it is forbidden by statute.

Ed. Note: This depraved, demonized court does not even follow precedents under, e.g.,

And this [disregard of the above] we do upon the ground that this [unconstitutional] dominion is essential to the value of slaves as property, to the security of the master and the public tranquillity, greatly dependent upon their subordination; and, in fine, as most effectually securing the general protection and comfort of the slaves themselves. Judgment below reversed; and judgment entered for the defendant.

No one can read this [immoral] decision, so fine and clear in expression, so dignified and solemn in its earnestness, and so dreadful in its results, without feeling at once deep respect for the man and horror for the system.

The man, judging him from this short specimen, which is all author [Stowe] knows,* has one of that high order of minds, which looks straight through all verbiage and sophistry to the heart of every subject which it encounters. He has, too, that noble
____________

* More recently the author has met with a passage in a North Carolina newspaper, containing some further par-

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scorn of dissimulation, that straightforward determination not to call a bad thing by a good name, even when most popular and reputable and [supposedly] legal, which it is to be wished could be more frequently seen, both in our Northern and Southern States. There is but one sole regret, and that is that such a man, with such a mind, should have been merely an expositor, and not a reformer of law.

Ed. Note: For another analysis, see, e.g., Mark V. Tushnet, Slave Law in the American South: STATE v. MANN in History and Literature (University Press of Kansas, 2003); and book review by
Keith E. Whittington.

Chapter III.

Souther v. The Commonwealth—TheNe Plus Ultra of Legal Humanity.

"Yet in the face of such laws and decisions as these! Mrs. Stowe, &c."—Courier & Enquirer.

THE case of Souther v the Commonwealth [48 Va 673 (1851)], has been cited by the Courier & Enquirer as a particularly favorable specimen of judicial proceedings under the slave code, with the following remark:

"And yet, in the face of such laws and decisions as these, Mrs. Stowe winds up a long series of cruelties upon her other black personages, by causing her faultless hero, Tom, to be literally whipped to death in Louisiana, by his master Legree; and these acts, which the laws make criminal, and punish as such, she sets forth in the most repulsive colors, to illustrate the institution of slavery!

By the above language the author [Stowe] was led into the supposition that this case had been conducted in a manner so creditable to the feelings of our common humanity as to present a fairer side of criminal jurisprudence in this respect.

She accordingly took the pains to procure a report of the case [at law library], designing to publish it as an offset to the many barbarities which research into this branch of the subject obliges one to unfold.

A legal gentleman has copied the case from Grattan's Reports [the official lawbook source], and it is here given. If the reader is astounded at it, he cannot be more so than was the writer [Stowe].

The killing of a slave by his master and owner, by wilful and excessive whipping, is murder in the first degree; though it may not have been the purpose and intention of the master and owner to kill the slave.

Simeon Souther was indicted at the October Term, 1850, of the Circuit Court for the County of Hanover, for the murder of his own slave The indictment contained fifteen counts, in which the various modes of punishment and torture by which the homicide was charged to have been committed were stated singly, and in various combinations. The fifteenth count unites them all and, as the court certifies that the indictment was sustained by the evidence, the giving the facts stated in that count will show what was the charge against the prisoner, and what was the proof to sustain it.

The count charged that on the lst day of September, 1849, the prisoner tied his negro slave, Sam, with ropes about his wrists, neck, body, legs and ankles, to a tree. That whilst so tied, the prisoner first whipped the slave with switches. That he next beat and cobbed the slave with a shingle, and compelled two of his slaves, a man and a woman, also to cob the deceased with the shingle. That whilst the deceased was so tied to the tree, the prisoner did strike, knock, kick, stamp and beat him upon various parts of his head, face and body; that he applied fire to his body , * * * that he then washed his body with warm water, in which pods of red pepper had been put and steeped, and he compelled his two slaves aforesaid also to wash him with this same preparation of warm water and red pepper. That after the tying, whipping, cobbing, striking, beating, knocking, kicking, stamping, wounding, bruising, lacerating, burning, washing and torturing, as

____________ticulars of the life of Judge Ruffin, which have proved interesting to her [Stowe], and may also to the reader.

From the Raleigh (N.C.) Register.

RESIGNATION OF THE CHIEF JUSTICEOF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA.

We publish below the letter of Chief Justice Ruffin of the Supreme Court, resigning his seat on the bench

This act takes us, and no less will it take the state, by surrprise The public are not prepared for it, and we doubt not there will scarcely be an exception to the deep and general regret which will be felt throughout the state. Judge Ruffin's great and unsurpassed legal learning, his untiring industry, the ease with which he mastered the details and comprehended the whole of the most complicated cases, were the admiration of the bar; and it has become a common saying of the ablest lawyers of the state, for a long time past, that his place on the bench could be supplied by no other than himself.

He is now, as we learn, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, in full possession of his usual excellent health, unaffected, so far as we can discover, in his natural vigor and strength, and certainly without any symptom of mental decay.

Forty-five years ago [1807] he commenced the practice of the law. He has been on the bench twenty-eight years [since 1824], of which time he has been one of the Supreme Court twenty-three years [since 1829]. During this long public career he has, in a pecuniary point of view, sacrificed many thousands; for there has been no time of it in which he might not, with perfect ease, have doubled, by practice, the amount of his salary as judge.

To the Honorable the General Assembly of North Carolina,now in session

"Gentlemen: I desire to retire to the walks of private life, and therefore pray your honorable body to accept the resignation of my place on the bench of the Supreme Court. In surrendering this trust, I would wish to express my grateful sense of the confidence and honors so often and so long bestowed on me by the General Assembly. But I have no language to do it suitably. I am very sensible that they were far beyond my deserts, and that I have made an insufficient return of the service. Yet I can truly aver that, to the best of my ability, I have administered the lawr as I understood it, and to the ends of suppressing crime and wrong, and upholding virtue, truth and right, aiming to give confidence to honest men, and to confirm in all good citizens love for our country, and a pure trust in her law and magistrates.

"In my place I hope I have contnbuted to theas ends, and I firmly believe that our laws will, as heretofore, be executed, and our people happy in the administration of justice, honest and contented, as long as they keep, and only so long as they keep, the independent and sound judiciary now established in the constitution, which, with all other blessings, I earnestly pray may be perpetuated to the people of North Carolina

"I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your most obliged and obedient servant,

THOMAS RUFFIN.

"Raleigh, November 10, 1852."

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aforesaid, the prisoner untied the deceased [Sam] from the tree in such wiiy as to throw him with violence to the ground; and he then and there did knock, kick, stamp and beat the deceased upon his head, temples, and various parts of his body.

That the prisoner [Souther] then had the deceased carried into a shed-room of his house, and there he compelled one of his slaves, in his presence, to confine the deceased's feet in stocks, by making his legs fast to a piece of timber, and to tie a rope about the neck of the deceased, and fasten it to a bed-post in the room, thereby strangling, choking and suffocating the deceased.

And that whilst the deceased was thus made fast in stocks as aforesaid, the prisoner did kick, knock, stamp and beat him upon his head, face, breast, belly, sides, back and body; and he again compelled his two slaves to apply fire to the body of the deceased, whilst he was so made fast as aforesaid.

And the count charged that from these various modes of punishment and torture the slave Sam then and there died. It appeared that the prisoner [Souther] commenced the punishment of the deceased in the morning, and that it was continued throughout the day; and that the deceased died in the presence of the prisoner, and one of his slaves, and one of the [poor white trash] witnesses, whilst the punishment was still progressing.

Field, J. delivered the opinion [decision] of the court.

The prisoner [Souther] was indicted and convicted of murder in the second decree, in the Circuit Court of Hanover, at its April term last past, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for five years, the period of time ascertained by the jury.

The murder consisted in the killing of a negro man-slave hy the name of Sam, the property of the prisoner, by cruel and excessive whipping and torture, inflicted by Souther, aided by two of hi» other slaves, on the 1st day of September, 1849.

The prisoner [felt he was wrongly convicted and] moved for a new trial, upon the ground that the offence, if any, amounted only to manslaughter. The motion for a new trial was overruled, and a bill of exceptions taken to the opinion of the court, setting forth the facts proved, or as many of them as were deemed material for the consideration of the application for a now trial. The bill of exception [by Souther] states:

That the slave Sam, in the indictment mentioned, was the slave and property of the prisoner [Souther].

That for the purpose of chastising the slave for the offence of getting drunk, and dealing as the slave confessed and alleged with Henry and Stone, two of the [poor white trash / redneck] witnesses for the Commonwealth [county prosecutor], he caused him to be tied and punished in the presence of the said witnesses, with the exception of slight whipping with peach or apple-tree switches, before the said witnesses arrived at the scene after they were sent for by the prisoner (who were present by request from the defendant), and of several slaves of the prisoner, in the manner and by the means charged in the indictment;

and the said slave died under and from the infliction of the said punishment, in the presence of the prisoner, one of his slaves, and of one of the witnesses for the Commonwealth.

But it did not appear that it was the design of the prisoner [Souther] to kill the said slave [Sam], unless such design be properly inferable from the manner, means and duration, of the punishment.

And, on the contrary, it did appear that the prisoner frequently declared, while the said slave was undergoing the punishmnent, that he [Souther] believed the said slave was feigning, and pretending to be suffering and injured when he was not.

The [county] judge certifies that the slave was punished in the manner and by the means charged in the indictment. The indictment contains fifteen counts, and sets forth a case of the most cruel and excessive whipping and torture.*

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It is believed that the records of criminal jurisprudence do not contain a case of more atrocious and wicked cruelty than was presented upon the trial of Souther; and yet it has been gravely and earnestly contended here by his [demonized lawyer] counsel that his [Souther's] offence amounts to manslaughter only.

It has been contended by the counsel of the prisoner that a man cannot be indicted and prosecuted for the cruel and excessive whipping of his own slave. That it is lawful for the master to chastise his slave, and that if death ensues from such chastisement, unless it was intended to produce death, it is like the case of homicide which is committed by a man in the performance of a lawful act, which is manslaughter only.

[The depraved court admitted that] It has been decided by this [demonized] court in [Commonwealth v] Turner's Case, 5 Rand [26 Va 678 (1827)], that the owner of a slave, for the malicious, cruel and excessive beating of his own slave, cannot be indicted [even for simple assault and battery]; yet it by no means follows, when such malicious, cruel and excessive beating results in death [witnessed by whites], though not intended and premeditated, that the beating is to be regarded as lawful for the purpose of reducing the crime to manslaughter, when the whipping is inflicted for the sole purpose of chastisement [for past action].

It is the policy of [the perverted legislators writing] the [unconstitutional] law, in respect to the relation of master and slave, and for the sake of securing proper subordination and obedience on the part of the slave, to protect the master from prosecution in all such cases, even if the whipping and punishment be malicious, cruel and excessive.

But in so inflicting punishment for the sake of punishment, the owner of the slave acts at his peril; and if death ensues in consequence of such punishment, the relation of master and slave affords no ground of excuse or palliation.

The principles of the common law, in relation to homicidc, apply to his case without qualification or exception; and according to those principles, the act of the prisoner [Souther], in the case under consideration, amounted to murder. * * * The crime of the prisoner is not manslaughter, but murder in the first degree.

This scene of torture, it seems, occupied about twelve hours. It occured in the State of Virginia, in the County of Hanover. Two white men were witnesses to nearly the whole proceeding, and, so far as we can see, made no effort to arouse the neighborhood and bring in help to stop the outrage. What sort of an education, what habits of thought, does this presuppose in these men?

The negro was tied to a tree and whipped with switches. When Souther became fatigued with the labor of whipping, he called upon a negro man of his, and made him cub Sam with a shingle. He also made a negro woman of his help to cob him. And, after cobbing and whipping, he aplied fire to the body of the slave. . . . . He [Souther] then caused him [Sam] to be washed down with hot water, in which pods of red pepper had been steeped. The negro was also tied to a log and to the bed-post with ropes, which choked him, and he was kicked and stamped by Souther. This sort of punishment was continued and repeated until the negro died under its infliction.

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(pp 81-82)

Chapter IV.

Protective Statutes.

Apprentices protected.—Outlawry—Melodrama of Prue
in the Swamp.—Harry the Carpenter, a Romance of Real Life.

BUT the question now occurs, Are there not protective statutes, the avowed object of which is the protection of the life and limb of the slave? We answer, there are; and these protective statutes are some of the most remarkable pieces of legislation extant.

That they were dictated by a spirit of humanity, charity, which hopeth all things, would lend us to hope; but no newspaper stories of bloody murders and shocking outrages convey to the mind so dreadful a picture of the numbness of public sentiment caused by slavery as those so-called protective statutes.

Ed. Note: For weaknesses of such laws, see Rev. John Rankin, Letters, pp 54-56.

The author [Stowe] copies the following from the statutes of North Carolina. Section 3d of the act passed in 1798 runs thus:

Whereas by another Act of the Assembly, passed in 1774, the killing of a slave, however wanton, cruel aod deliberate, is only punishable in the first instance by imprisonment and paying the value thereof to the owner, which distinction of criminality between the murder of a white person and one who is equally a human creature, but merely of a different complexion, isDISGRACEFUL TO HUMANITY, AND DEGRADING IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE TO THE LAWS AND PRINCIPLES OF A FREE, CHRISTIAN AND ENLIGHTENED COUNTRY,

Be it enacted, &c.,

That if any person shall hereafter be guilty of wilfully and maliciously killing a slave, such offender shall, upon the first conviction thereof, be adjudged guilty of murder, and shall suffer the same punishment as if he had killed a free man. Provided always, this act shall not extend to the person killing a slave OUTLAWED BY VIRTUE OF ANY ACT OF ASSEMBLY OF THIS STATE, or to any slave in the act of resistance to his lawful owner or master, or to any slave dying under moderate correction."

A law with a like proviso, except the outlawry clause, exists in Tennessee. See Caruthers and Nicholson's Compilation, 1836, p. 676.

The language of the constitution of Georgia, art. iv., sec. 12, is as follows:

Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life shall suffer such punishment as would be indicted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrrection by such slave, and unless such death should happen by accident in giving such slave moderate correction.—Cobb's Dig., 1851, p. 1125.

Let now any Englishman or New Englander imagine that such laws with regard to apprentices had ever been proposed in Parliament or State Legislature under the head of protective acts,—laws which in so many words permit the killing of the subject in three cases, and those comprising all the acts which would generally occur under the law; namely, if the slave resist, if he be outlawed, or if he die under moderate correction.

What rule in the world will ever prove correction immoderate, if the fact that the subject dies under it is not held as proof? How many such "accidents" would have to happen in Old England or New England, before Parliament or Legislature would hear from such a protective law.

"But," some one may ask, "what is the outlawry spoken of in this act?" The question is pertinent, and must be answered. The author [Stowe] has copied the following from the Revised Statutes of North Carolina, chap. cxi, sec. 22. It may be remarked in passing that the preamble to this law presents rather a new view of slavery to those who have formed their ideas from certain pictures of blissful contentment and Arcadian repose, which have been much in vogue of late.

Whereas, MANY TIMESslaves run away and lie out, hid and lurking in swamps, woods, and other obscure places, killing cattle and hogs, and committing other injuries to the inhabitants of this state;

in all such cases, upon intelligence of any slave or slaves lying out as aforesaid, any two justices of the peace for the county wherein such slave or slaves is or are supposed to lurk or do mischief, shall, and they are hereby empowered and required to issue proclamation against such slave or slaves (reciting his or their names, and the name or names of the owner or owners, if known), thereby requiring him or them, and every of them, forthwith to surrender him or themselves;

and also to empower and require the sheriff of the said county to take such power with him as he shall think fit and necessary for going in search and pursuit of, and effectually apprehending, such outlying slave or slaves; which proclamation shall be published at the door of the court-house, and at such other places as said justices shall direct.

And if any slave or slaves agaiinst whom proclamation hath been thus issued stay out, and do not immediately return home, it shall be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever to kill and destroy such slave or slaves by such ways and means as shall think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for the same.

What ways and means have been thought fit, in actual experience, for the destruction of the slave? What was done with the negro McIntosh, in the streets of St. Louis, in open daylight, and endorsed at the next sitting of the Supreme Court of the state, as transcending the sphere of law, because it was "an act of the majority of her most respectable citizens"?*

If these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry? If these things have once been
____________

South. It is unhappily too notorious that, they exist wverywhere,—in England, in New England, and the world over; but they can only arrive at full maturity in wickedness under a system where the law clothes them with absolute and irresponsible power.

Chapter V.

Protective Acts of South Carolina and
Louisiana.—The Iron Collar of
Louisiana and North Carolina.

Thus far by way of considering the protective acts of North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

Certain miscellaneous protective acts of various other states will now be cited, merely as specimens of the spirit of legislation.

In South Carolina, the act of 1740 punished the wilful, deliberate murder of a slave by disfranchisement, and by a fine of seven hundred pounds current money, or, in default of payment, imprisonment for seven years.—Stroud, p. 39. 2 Brevard's Digest, p. 241.

But the wilful murder of a slave, in the sense contemplated in this law, is a crime which would not often occur. The kind of murder which was most frequent among masters or overseers was [by said law] guarded against by another section of the same act,—how adequately the reader will judge for himself, from the following quotation:

If any person shall, on a sudden heat or passion, or by undue correction, kill his
own slave, or the slave of any other person, he shall forfeit the saum of three hundred and fifty pounds current money.—Stroud's Sketch, p 40. 2 Brevard's Digest, 241. James' Digest, 392.

In 1821 the act punishing the wilful murder of the slave only with fine or imprisonment was mainly repealed, and it was enacted that such crime should be punished by death; but the latter section, which relates to killing the slave in sudden heat or prision, or by undue correction, has been altered only by diminishing the pecuniary penalty to a fine of five hundred dollars, authorizing also imprisonment for six months.

The next protective statute to be noticed is the following from the act of 1740, South Carolina.

In case any person wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, * * * or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any slave of any limb, or member, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by whipping or beating with a horse-whip, cowskin, switch, or small stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave, every such person shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current money.

The language of this law, like many other of these protective enactments, is exceedingly suggestive; the first suggestion that occurs is, What sort of an institution, and what sort of a state of society is it, that called out a law worded like this? Laws are generally not made against practices that do not exist, and exist with some degree of frequency.

The advocates of slavery are very fond of comparing it to the apprentice system of England and America. Let us suppose that in the British Parliament, or in a New England Legislature, the following law is proposed, under the title of An Act for the Protection of Apprentices, &c. &c.

In case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put out the eye, or cruelly scald, burn, or deprive any apprentice of any limb or member, or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by whipping or beating with a horse-whip, cowskin, switch or small stick, or by putting irons on or confining or imprisoning such apprentice, every such person shall, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current money.

What a sensation such a proposed law would make in England may be best left for Englishmen to say; but in New England it would simply constitute the proposer a candidate for Bedlam [insane asylum]. Yet that such a statute is necessary in South Carolina is evident enough, if we reflect that, because there is no such statute in Virginia, it has been decided that a wretch who perpetrates all these enormities on a slave cannot even be indicted for it, unless the slave dies.

But let us look further:—What is to be the penalty when any of these fiendish things are done?

Why, the man forfeits a hundred pounds, current money. Surely he ought to pay as much as that for doing so very unnecessary an act, when the Legislature bountifully allows him to inflict any torture which revengeful ingenuity could devise, by means of horse-whip, cowskin, switch or small stick, or putting irons on, or confining and imprisoning. One would surely think that here was sufficient scope and variety of legalized means of torture to satisfy any ordinary appetite for vengeance.

It would appear decidedly that any more piquant varieties of agony ought to be an extra charge. The [vile, demonized] advocates of slavery are fond of comparing the situation of the slave with

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little affair terminates. But it does not terminate thus for Tom or Sambo, Dinah, or any others who have been alluded to for authority. What will happen to them, when Mr. Legree comes home, had better be left to conjecture.

It is claimed, by the [lying] author of certain paragraphs quoted at the commencement of Part II., that there exist in Louisiana ample protective acts [laws] to prevent the separation of young children from their mothers. This [demonized] writer appears to be in the enjoyment of an amiable ignorance and unsophisticated innocence with regard to the workings of human society generally, which is, on the whole, rather refreshing. For on a certain incident in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which represented Cassy's little daughter as having been sold from her, he makes the following naif remark:

Now, the reader will perhaps be surprised to know that such an incident as the sale of Casey apart from Eliza, upon which the whole interest of the foregoing narrative hinges, never could have taken place in Louisiana, and that the bill of sale for Eliza would not have been worth the paper it was written on.—Observe. George Shelby states that Eliza was eight or nine years old at the time his father purchased her in New Orleans. Let us again look at the statute-book of Louisiana.

In the Code Noir we find it set down that

"Every person is expressly prohibited from selling separately froiri their mothers the children who shall not have attained the full age of ten years."

And this humane provision is strengthened by a statute, one clause of which runs as follows:

"Be it further enacted, that if any person or persons shall sell the mother of any slave child or children under the age of ten years, separate from said child or children, or shall, the mother living, sell any slave child or children of ten years of age or under, separate from said mother, such person or persons shall incur the penalty of the sixth section of this act."

This penalty is a fine of not less than one thousand nor more than two thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the public jail for a period not less than six months nor more than one year.—Vide Acts of Louisiana, 1 Session, 9th Legislature, 1828-9, No. 24, Section 16. (Rev. Stat., 1852, p. 550, (§ 143.)

What a charming freshness of nature is suggested by this assertion! A thing could not have happened in a certain state, because there is a law against it!

Has there not been for two years a law forbidding to succor fugitives, or to hinder their arresr?—and has not this thing been done thousands of times in all the Northern States, and is not it more and more likely to be done every year? What is a law, against the whole public sentiment of society?—and will anybody venture to say that the public sentiment of Louisiana practically goes against separation of families?

But let us examine a case more minutely remembering the bearing on it of two great foundation principles of slave jurisprudence: namely, that a slave cannot bring a suit in any case, except in a suit for personal freedom, and this in some states must be brought by a guardian; and that a slave cannot bear testimony in any case in which whites are implicated.

Suppose Butler wants to sell Cassy's child of nine years. There is a statute forbidding to sell under ten years;—what is Cassy to do? She cannot bring suit. Will the state prosecute? Suppose it does,—what then? Butler says the child is ten years old; if he pleases, he will say she is ten and a half, or eleven. What is Cassy to do? She cannot testify; besides, she is utterly in Butler's power. He may tell her that if she offers to stir in the affair, he will whip the child within an inch of its life; and she knows he can do it, and that there is no help for it;—he may lock her up in a dungeon, sell her on to a distant plantation, or do any other despotic thing he chooses, and there is nobody to say Nay.

How much does the protective statute amount to for Cassy? It may be very well as a piece of advice to the public, or as a decorous expression of opinion, but one might as well try to stop the current of the Mississippi [river] with a bulrush as the tide of trade in human beings with sucb a regulation.

We think that, by this time, the reader will agree with us, that the less the defenders of slavery say about protective statutes, the better.

Chapter VII.

The Execution of Justice.

State v. Eliza Rowand.—The "Ægisof Protection" to the Slave's Life.

"We cannot but regard the fact of this trial as a solitary occurrence."—Charleston Courier.

HAVING given some account of what sort of statutes are to be found on the law-books of slavery, the reader will hardly be satisfied without knowing what sort of trials are held under them. We will quote one specimen of a trial, reported in the Charleston Courier of May 6th, 1847. The Charleston Courier is one of the leading papers of South Carolina, and the case is reported with the ut-

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just the position he would naturally fall into, had he sunk from exhaustion. They wish it to appear that he hung himself. Could this be proved (we need hardly say that it is not), it would relieve but slightly the dark picture of their guilt. The probability is that he sank, exhausted by suffering, fatigue and fear.

As to the testimony of "surgeons," founded upon a post-mortem examination of the brain and blood-vessels, "that the subject would not have fainted before strangulation," it is not worthy of consideration. We know something of the fallacies and fooleries of such examinations.

From all we can learn, the only evidence relied on by the prosecution was that white man employed by the Castlemans. He was dependent upon them for work. Other evidence might have been obtained; why it was not is for the prosecuting attorney to explain. To prove what we say, and to show that justice has not been done in this horrible affair, we publish the following communication from an old and highly-respectable citizen of this place, and who is very far from being an Abortionist. The slave-holders whom he mentions are well knonn here, and would have promptly appeared in the case, had the prosecution, which was aware of their readiness, summoned them.

"To the Editor of the Era:

"I see that Castleman, who lately had a trial for whipping a slave to death, in Virginia, was 'triumphantly acquitted,'—as many expected. There are three persons in this city, with whom I am acquainted, who staid at Castleman's the same night in which this awful tragedy was enacted. They heard the dreadful lashing and the heart-rending screams and entreaties of the sufferer.

They implored the only white man they could find on the premises, not engaged in the bloody work, to interpose; but for a long time he refused, on the ground that he was a dependent, and was afraid to give offence; and that, moreover, they [the Castlemans] had been drinking, and he was in fear for his own life, should he say a word that would be displeasing to them.

"He did, however, venture, and returned and reported the cruel manner in which the slaves were chained, and lashed, and secured in a blacksmith's vice. In the morning, when they ascertained that one of the slaves was when they ascertained that one of the slaves was dead, they were so shocked and indignant that they refused to eat in the house, and reproached Castleman with his cruelty. He expressed his regret that the slave had died, and especially as he had ascertained that he was innocent of the accusation for which he had suffered. The idea was that he [the deceased] had fainted from exhaustion; and, the chain being round his neck, he was strangled.

"The persons I refer to are themselves slave-holders,—but their feelings were so harrowed and lacerated that they could not sleep (two of them are ladies; and for many nights afterwards their rest was disturbed, and their dreams made frightful, by the appalling recollection.

"These persons would have been material witnesses, and would have willingly attended on the part of the prosecution. The knowledge they had
of the case was communicated to the proper authorities, yet their attendance was not required [subpoenaed]. The only witness was that dependent who considered his own life in danger.

"Yours, &c.,

"J. F."

The account, as published by the friends of the accused parties, shows a case of extreme cruelty. The statements made by our corresondent prove that the truth has not been fully revealed, and that justice has been baffled. The result of the trial shows how irresponsible is the power of a master over his slave; and that whatever security the latter has is to be sought in the humanity of the former, not in the guarantees of law. Against the cruelty of an inhuman master he has really no safeguard.

Our conduct in relation to this case, deferring all notice of it in our columns till a legal investigation could be had, shows that we are not disposed to be captious towards our slave-holding countrymen. In no unkind spirit have we examined this lamentable case; but we must expose the utter repugnance of the slave system to the proper administration of justice. The newspapers of Virginia generally publish the account from the Spirit of Jefferson without comment. They are evidently not satisfied that justice was done; they doubtless will deny that the accused were guilty of homicide, legally; but they will not deny that they were guilty of an atrocity which should brand them forever, in a Christian country.

Chapter X.

Principles Established.—State v.
Legree; A Case Not in the Books.

FROM a review of all the legal cases which have hitherto been presented, and of the principles established in the judicial decisions upon them, the following facts must be apparent to the reader:

Second, That the fact of so killing a slave is not of itself held presumption of murder, in slave jurisprudence.

Third, That the slave in the act of resistance to his master may always be killed.

From these things it will be seen to follow, that, if the facts of the death of Tom had been fully proved by two white witnesses, in open court, Legree could not have been held by any consistent interpreter of slave-law to be a murderer; for Tom was in the act of resistance to the will of his master. His master had laid a command on him, in the presence of other slaves. Tom had deliberately refused to obey the command. The master commenced chastisement, to reduce him to obedience.

And it is evident, at the first glance, to every one, that, if the law does not sustain him in enforcing obedience in such a case, there is an end of the whole slave power. No Southern court would dare to decide that Legree did wrong to continue the punishment, as long as Tom continued the insubordination. Legree stood by him every

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the point of death, was not indictable. Not being read in English law, the writer cannot say; but there is strong impression from within that such a [pro-torture-murder Virginia supreme court] decision as this would have shaken the whole island of Great Britain; and that such a [torture-murder] case as Souther v. The Commonwealth [48 Va 673 (1851)] would never have been forgotten under the sun. Yet it is probable that very few persons in the United States ever heard of the case, or ever would have heard of it, had it not been quoted by the [demonized] New York Courier and Enquirer as an .overwhelming example of legal humanity.

The horror of the whole [torture-murder] matter is, that more than one such case should ever need to happen in a country, in order to make the whole community feel, as one man, that such power ought not to be left in the hands of a master. How many such cases do people wish to have happen?—how many must happen, before they will learn that utter despotic power is not to be trusted in any hands?

If one white man's son or brother had been treated in this way, under the law of apprenticeship, the whole country would have trembled, from Louisiana to Maine, till that law had been altered. They forget that the black man has also a father. It is

"He that sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, who bringeth the princes to nothing, and maketh the judges of the earth as vanity" [Isaiah 40:22-23]. He hath said that "When he maketh inquisition for blood, he FORGETTETH NOT the cry of the humble" [Psalm 9:12].

That blood which has fallen so despised to the earth,— that blood which lawyers have quibbled over, in the quiet of legal nonchalance, discussing in great ease whether it fell by murder in the first or second degree,—HE will one day reckon for as the blood of his own child. He

"is not slack concerning his promises, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward;" [2 Peter 3.9]

but the day of vengeance is surely coming, and the year of his redeemed is in his heart.

Another court will sit upon these trials, when the Son of Man shall come in his glory. It will be not alone [torture-murderer] Souther, and such as he, that will be arraigned there; but all those in this nation, north and south, who have abetted the system, and made the laws which made Souther what he was. In that court negro testimony will be received, if never before; and the judges and fhe counsellors, and the chief men, and the mighty men, marshalled to that awful bar, will say to the mountains and the rocks. "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb."

The wrath of the Lamb! Think of it! Think that Jesus Christ has been present, a witness,—a silent witness through every such scene of torture and anguish,—a silent witness in every such court, calmly hearing the evidence given in, the lawyers pleading, the bills filed, and cases appealed! And think what a heart Jesus Christ has, and with what age-long patience he has suffered. What awful depths are there in tliat word LONG-SUFFERING! and what must be that wrath, when, after ages of endurance, this dread accumulation of wrong and anguish comes up at last to judgment!

Chapter XII.

A Comparison of the RomanLaw of Slavery with the American.

THE writer has expressed the opinion that the American law of slavery, taken throughout, is a more severe one than that of any other civilized nation, ancient or modern, if we except, perhaps, that of the Spartans. She has not at hand the means of comparing French and Spanish slave-codes; but, as it is a common remark that Roman slavery was much more severe than any that has ever existed in America, it will be well to compare the Roman with the American law.

We therefore present a description of the Roman slave-law, as quoted by William Jay, Esq., from [William] Blair's "Inquiry into the State of Slavery among the Romans" [Edinburgh: Thomas Clark, 1833; reprinted, Detroit: Negro History Press, 1970; repr. St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1977], giving such references to American authorities as will enable the reader to make his own comparison, and to draw his own inferences.

I. The slave had no protection against the avarice, rage, or lust of the [Roman] master, whose authority was founded in absolute property; and the bondman was viewed less as a human being subject to arbitrary dominion, than as an inferior animal, dependent wholly on the will of his owner.

See law of South Carolina, in Judge [George M.] Stroud's "Sketch of the Laws of Slavery" [Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1827], p. 23.

Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatever. 2 Brev. Dig. 229. Prince's Dig. 446. Cobb's Dig. 971. [Ed. Note. "Dig" is abbreviation for Digest [Summary] of Laws.]

A slave is one who is in the in the power of a master to whom he belongs. Lou. Civil Code, art. 35. Stroud's Sketch, p. 22.

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Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body [extortion]. There is nothing else which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect. Judge Ruffin's Decision in the case of The State v Mann [13 NC 263 (1829), supra]. Wheeler's Law of Slavery, 246.

II. At first, the master possessed the uncontrolled power of life and death.

At a very early period in Virginia, the power of life over slaves was given by [unconstitutional] statute. Judge Clarke, in case of State of Miss v Jones, Wheeler, 252.

III. He [Roman master] might kill, mutilate or torture his slaves, for any or no offence; he might force them to become gladiators or prostitutes.

The privilege of killing is now somewhat abridged; as to mutilation and torture, see the case of Souther v. The Commonwealth, 7 Grattan 673, quoted in Chapter III., above. Also State v. Mann, in the same chapter, from Wheeler, p. 244.

IV. The temporary unions of male with female slaves were formed and dissolved at his command; families and friends were separated when he pleased.

See the decision of Judge Mathews in the case of Girod v. Lewis, Wheeler, 199:

It is clear, that slaves have no legal capacity to assent to any contract. With the consent of their master, they may marry, and their moral power to agree to such a contract or connection as that of marriage cannot be doubted; but whilst in a state of slavery it cannot produce any civil effect, because slaves are [unconstitutionally] deprived of all civil rights.

V. The laws recognized no obligation upon the owners of slaves, to furnish them with food and clothing, or to take care of them in sickness.

The extent to which this deficiency in the Roman law was been supplied in the American, by "protective acts, has been exhibited above.*

VI. Slaves could have no property but by the sufferance of their master, for whom they acquired everything, and with whom they could form no engagements which could be binding on him.

The following chapter will show how far American legislation is in advance of that of the Romans, in that it makes it a penal offence on the part of the master to permit his slave to hold property, and a crime on the part of the slave to be so permitted. For the present purpose, we give an extract from the Civil code of Louisima, as quoted by Judge Stroud:

A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master. Civil Code, Article 35, Stroud, p. 22.

According to Judge Ruffin, a slave is

"one doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits." Wheeler's Law of Slavery, p. 246. State v Mann.

With reference to the binding power of engagements between master and slave, the following decisions from the United States Digest are in point (7, p. 449):

All the acquisitions of the slave in possession are the property of his master, notwithstanding the promise [word] of his master that the slave shall have certain of them. Gist v Toohey, 2 Rich 424.

A slave paid money which he had earned over and above his wages, for the purchase of his children into the hands of B, and B purchased such children with the money. Held that the master of such slave was entitled to recover the money of B. Ibid.

VII. The master might transfer his rights by either sale or gift, or might bequeath them by will.

Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever. Law of S. Carolina, Cobb's Digest, 971.

VIII. A master selling, giving, or bequeathing a slave, sometimes made it a provision that he should never be carried abroad, or that he should be manunitted on a fixed day; or that, on the other hand, he should never be emancipated, or that he should be kept in chains for life.

We hardly think that a provision that a slave should never be emancipated, or that he should be kept in chains for life, would be sustained. A provision that the slave should not be carried out of the state, or sold, and that on the happening of either event he should be free, has been sustained. Williams v Ash, [42 U.S. 1; 11 L.Ed. 25 (1843)] 1 How. U.S. Rep. 1; 5 U.S. Dig 792 § 5.

The remainder of Blair's account of Roman slavery is devoted rather to the practices of masters than the state of the law itself. Surely, the writer [Stowe] is not called upon to exhibit in the society of enlightened, republican and Christian America, in the nineteenth century, a parallel to the atrocities committed in pagan Rome, under the sceptre of the persecuting Cæsars, when the amphitheatre was the favorite resort of the most refined of her citizens, as well as the great "school of morals" for the multitude.
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* See also the case of State v Abram, 10 Ala. 928, 7 U. S. Dig p 419. "The master or overseer, and not the slave, is the proper judge whether the slave is too sick to be able to labor. The latter cannot, therefore, resist the order of the former to go to work."

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A few references only will show, as far as we desire to show, how much safer it is now to trust man with absolute power over his fellow, than it was then.

IX. While slaves turned the handmill they were generally chained, and had a broad wooden collar, to prevent them from eating the grain. The FURCA, which in later language means a gibbet, was, in older dialect, used to denote a wooden fork or collar, which was made to bear upon their shoulders, or around their necks, as a mark of disgrace, as much as an uneasy burden.

The reader has already seen, in Chapter V., that this instrument of degradation has been in use, in our own day, in certain of the slave states, under the express sanction and protection of statute laws; although the material is different, and the construction doubtless improved by modern ingenuity.

X. Fetters and chains were much used for punishment or restraint, and were, in some instances, worn by slaves during life, through the sole authority of the master. Porters at the gates of the rich were generally chained. Field laborers worked for the most part in irons posterior to the first ages of the republic.

The Legislature of South Carolina specially sanctions the same practices, by excepting them in the "protective enactment," which inflicts the [minor] penalty of one hundred pounds "in case any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue," &c., of a slave, "or shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than by whipping or beating with a horse-whip, cowskin, switch, or small stick, or by putting irons on, or confining or imprisoning such slave."

XI. Some persons made it their business to catch runaway slaves.

That such a profession, constituted by the highest legislative authority in the nation, and rendered respectable by the commendation expressed or implied of statesmen and [vile] divines, and of newspapers political and religious, exists in our midst, especially in the free states, is a fact which is, day by day, making itself too apparent to need testimony. The matter seems, however, to be managed in a more perfectly open and business-like manner in the State of Alabama than elsewhere. Mr. Jay cites the following advertisement from the Sumpter County (Ala.) Whig.

NEGRO DOGS.

The undersigned having bought the entire pack of Negro Dogs (of the Hay and Allen stock), he now proposes to catch runaway negroes. His charges will be Three Dollars per day for hunting, and Fifteen Dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and one half miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones' Bluff road.

WILLIAM GAMBEL.

Nov. 6, 1845.—6m.

The following is copied, verbatim et literatim, and with the pictorial embellishments, from The Dadeville (Ala.) Banner, of November 10th, 1852. The Dadeville Banner is "devoted to politics, literature, education, agriculture, &c."

NOTICE

The undersigned having an excellent silent pack of HOUNDS, for trailing and catching runaway slaves, informs the public that his prices in future will be as follows for such services:

For each day employed in hunting or trailing

$2.50

For catching each slave

10.00

For going over ten miles and catching slaves

20.00

If sent for, the above prices will be exacted in cash. The subscriber resides one mile and a half south of Dadeville, Ala.

B. BLACK.

Dadeville, Sept. 1, 1852. 1tf

XII. The runaway, when taken, was severely punished by authority of the master, or by the judge, at his desire; sometimes with crucifixion, amputation of a foot, or by being sent to fight as a gladiator with wild beasts; but most frequently by being branded on the brow with letters indicative of his crime.

That severe punishment would be the lot of the recaptured runaway, every one would suppose, from the "absolute power" of the master to inflict it. That it is inflicted in many cases, it is equally easy and needless to prove. The peculiar forms of punishment mentioned above are now very much out of vogue, but the following advertisement by Mr. Micajah Ricks, in the Raleigh (N.C.) Standard of July 18th, 1838, shows that something of classic taste in torture still lingers in our degenerate days.

Ran away, a negro woman and two children; a few days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face. I tried to make the letter M.

It is charming to notice the naïf betrayal of literary pride on the part of Mr. Ricks. He did not wish that letter M to be taken as a specimen of what he could do in the way of writing. The creature would not hold still, and he fears the M may be illegible.

The above is only one of a long list of advertisements of maimed, cropped and branded negroes, in the book of Mr. Weld, entitled American Slavery as It Is, p. 77.

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XIII. Cruel masters sometimes hired torturers by profession, or had such persons in their establishments, to assist them in punishing their slaves. The noses and ears and teeth of slaves were often in danger from an enraged owner; and sometimes the eyes of a great offender were put out. Crucifixion was very frequently made the fate of a wretched slave for a trifling misconduct, or from mere caprice.

For justification of such practices as these, we refer again to that horrible list of maimed and mutilated men, advertised by slaveholders themelves, in [Rev. Theodore] Weld's American Slavery as It Is, p. 77. We recall the reader's attention to the evidence of the monster Kephart, given in Part I. As to crucifixion, we presume that there are wretches whose religious scruples would deter them from this particular form of torture who would not hesitate to inflict equal cruelties by other means; as the Greek pirate, during a massacre in the season of Lent, was conscience-stricken at having tasted a drop of blood.

The last item in Blair's description of Roman slavery is the following:

By a decree passed by the Senate, if a master was murdered when his slaves might possibly have aided him, all his household within reach were held as implicated and deserving of death; and Tacitus relates an instance in which a family of four hundred were all executed.

To this alone, of all the atrocities of the slavery of old heathen Rome, do we fail to find a parallel in the slavery of the United States of America.

There are other respects, in which American legislation has reached a refinement in tyranny of which the despots of those early days never conceived. The following is the language of [Edward] Gibbon [1737-1794]:

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom. * * * Without destroying the distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honors was presented even to those whom pride and prejudice almost disdained to number among the human species.*

The youths of promising genius were instructed in the arts and sciences, and their price was ascertained by the degree of their skill and talents. Almost every profession, either liberal or mechanical, might be found in the household of an opulent senator.†

The following chapter will show how "the best comfort" which Gibbon knew for human adversity is taken away from the American slave; how he is denied the commonest privileges of education and mental improvement, and how the whole tendency of the unhappy system, under which he is in bondage, is to take from him the consolations of religion itself, and to degrade him from our common humanity, and common brotherhood with the Son of God.

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Chapter XIII.

The Men Better Than Their Laws.

Judgment is turned away backward,
And Justice standeth afar off;
For Truth is fallen in the street,
And Equity cannot enter.
Yea, Truth faileth;
And HE THAT DEPARTETH FROM EVIL

So full of cruelty, and of unmerciful severity is the slave-code,—such an atrocity is the institution of which it is the legal definition,—that there are multitudes of individuals too generous and too just to be willing to go to the full extent of its restrictions and deprivations.

A generous man, instead of regarding the poor slave as a piece of property, dead, and void of rights, is tempted to regard him rather as a helpless younger brother, or as a defenceless child, and to extend to him, by his own good right arm, that protection and those rights which the law denies him. A religious man, who, by the theory of his belief, regards all men as brothers, and considers his Christian slave, with himself, as a member of Jesus Christ,—as of one body, one spirit, and called in one hope of his calling,—cannot willingly see him "doomed to live without knowledge," without the power of reading the written Word, and to raise up his children after him in the same darkness.

Hence, if left to itself, individual humanity would, in many cases, practically abrogate the slave-code. Individual humanity would teach the slave to read and write,—would build school-houses for his children, and would, in very, very many cases, enfranchise him.

The result of all this has been foreseen. It has been foreseen that the result of edu-
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HAVING compared the American law with the Roman [practice], we will now compare it with one other code of slave-laws, to wit, the Hebrew.

This comparison is the more important, because American slavery has been defended on the ground of God's permitting Hebrew slavery.

The inquiry now arises, What kind of slavery was it that was permitted among the Hebrews? for in different nations very different systems have been called by the general name of slavery.

Ed. Note: The Hebrews entering Israel were agrarians. The Bible, Joshua 14-19, records the land grants. This meant being self-employed, everyone self-employed.
Bible "legislation [was] absolutely and entirely against [slavery], legislation in abhorrence of it, legislation condemning and forbidding it under penalty of death," says Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D., On the Subject of the Iniquity of the Extension of Slavery (1856), pp 19-20.
The law permitted someone, however, to become an employee of another person. Of course, this would typically be an unnecessary event; everyone had their own independent land and livelihood. The Bible records NOBODY abandoning their own land, to work that of another's.
You may check Bible references yourself, and are encouraged to do so.

That the patriarchal state of servitude which existed in the time of Abraham was a very different thing from American slavery, a few graphic incidents in the Scripture narrative show; for we read that when the angels came to visit Abraham, although he had three hundred servants born in his house, it is said that Abraham hasted, and took a calf, and killed it, and gave it to a young man to dress; and that he told Sarah

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to take three measures of meal and knead it into cakes; and that when all was done, he himself set it before his guests [Genesis 18:5-8].

From various other incidents which appear in the patriarchal narrative, it would seem that these servants bore more the relation of the members of a Scotch clan to their feudal lord than that of an American slave to his master; thus it seems that if Abraham had died without children his head servant would have been his heir.—Gen. xv. 3.

In the New Testament the whole Hebrew system of administration is spoken of as a relatively imperfect one, and as superseded by the Christian dispensation.—Heb. viii. 13.

We are taught thus to regard the Hebrew system as an

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educational system, by which a debased, half-civilised race, which had been degraded by slavery in its worst form among the Egyptians, was gradually elevated to refinement and humanity.

As they went from the land of Egypt, it would appear that the most disgusting personal habits, the most unheard-of and unnatural impurities, prevailed among them; so that it was necessary to make laws with relations to things of which Christianity has banished the very name from the earth.

Beside all this, polygamy, war, and slavery, were the universal custom of nations.

It is represented in the New Testament that God, in educating this people, proceeded in the same gradual manner in which a wise father would proceed with a family of children.

He selected a few of the most vital points of evil practice, and forbade them by positive statute, under rigorous penalties.

The worship of any other god was, by the Jewish law, constituted high treason, and rigorously punished with death.

As the knowledge of the true God and religious instruction could not then, as now, be afforded by printing and books, one day in the week had to be set apart for preserving in the minds of the people a sense of His being, and their obligations to Him. The devoting of this day to any other purpose was also punished with death; and the reason is obvious, that its sacredness was the principal means relied on for preserving the allegiance of the nation to their king and God, and its desecration, of course, led directly to high treason against the head of the State.

With regard to many other practices which prevailed among the Jews, as among other heathen nations, we find the Divine Being taking the same course which wise human legislators have taken.

When Lycurgus wished to banish money and its attendant luxuries from Sparta, he did not forbid it by direct statute-law, but he instituted a currency so clumsy and uncomfortable that, as we are informed by Rollin, it took a cart and pair of oxen to carry home the price of a very moderate estate.

In the same manner the Divine Being surrounded the customs of polygamy, war, blood-revenge, and slavery, with regulations which gradually and certainly tended to abolish them entirely.

No one would pretend that the laws which God established in relation to polygamy, cities of refuge, &c., have any application to Christian nations now.

The following summary of some of these laws of the Mosaic code is given by Dr. C. E. Stowe [1802-1886], Professor of Biblical Literature in Andover Theological Seminary:—

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1. It commanded a Hebrew, even though a married man, with wife and children living, to take the childless widow of a deceased brother, and beget children with her.—Deut. xxv. 6-10.

2. The Hebrews, under certain restrictions, were allowed to make concubines, or wives for a limited time, of women taken in war.—Deut. xxi. 10-19.

3. A Hebrew who already had a wife was allowed to take another also, provided he still continued his intercourse with the first as her husband, and treated her kindly and affectionately.—Exodus xxi. 9-11.

4. By the Mosaic law, the nearest relative of a murdered Hebrew could pursue and slay the murderer, unless he could escape to the city of refuge; and the some permission was given in case of accidental homicide.—Num. xxxv. 9-39.

Any one, or all, of the above practices, can be justified by the Mosaic law, as well as the practice of slaveholding.

Each of these laws, although in its time it was an ameliorating law, designed to take the place of some barbarous abuse, and to be a connecting link by which some higher state of society might be introduced, belongs confessedly to that system which St. Paul says made nothing perfect. They are a part of the commandment which he says was annulled for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof, and which, in the time which he wrote, was waxing old, and ready to vanish away.

And Christ himself says, with regard to certain permissions of this system, that they were given on account of the "hardness of their hearts"—because the attempt to enforce a more stringent system at that time, owing to human depravity, would have only produced greater abuses.